Henry James Drew-Smythe was born at Northampton on 1 June 1891, the first child of Frank Thompson Smythe and Ada (née Drew). He was educated at Taunton School and Bristol University where he won the gold medal in his final year at the Medical School. After resident appointments at Bristol General and Bristol Childrens' Hospital he joined the RAMC from 1914 to 1918, being demobilised with the rank of Major. After the war he did postgraduate work at the London Hospital where he studied under Russell Howard and took no less than three higher qualifications in 1921. No mean sportsman he played hockey for Somerset for several years, and rugby for the Bristol Medical School and the United Hospitals team in London. On returning to Bristol he became assistant and then senior gynaecologist and obstetrician at Bristol General Hospital and also Professor of Obstetrics to the University of Bristol. He published a number of papers on the induction of labour by rupture of the hind waters, other articles on gynaecology and obstetrics in various medical journals and the chapter on operative obstetrics in Bowes' *Modern trends in obstetrics and gynaecology*, 1950. He invented the Drew-Smythe catheter and was at one time President of the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society. During the second world war, probably as a Territorial officer, he served from 1939 to 1945 with the rank of Colonel and may well have been awarded his TD prior to that conflict. He married Enid Audrey Cloutman in 1914 and there were two sons of the marriage. He died in a Cheltenham nursing home on 12 August 1983 aged 92, and there is no record as to whether his wife and sons survived.